


Shine On You Crazy Diamond

by Abagail_Snow



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Angst, Book 3: Mockingjay, Canon Compliant, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 22:16:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1363684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abagail_Snow/pseuds/Abagail_Snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After assassinating Coin, Katniss finds she’s not the only prisoner being held to await trial.  (Very slight canon divergence)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shine On You Crazy Diamond

What I can do is give up.  I resolve to lie on the bed without eating, drinking or taking my medications.  I could do it, too.  Just die.  The tray continues to be replaced daily.  It's a wonder they don't just refill the small paper cup with morphling tablets, but the bread is always moist and the stew a different color.  It's tempting, but I persist in denying myself.

The nights become unbearable with new horrors to star in my nightmares.  I see the lizard muttations with their choking rose scent as they rip Finnick apart limb by limb.  The deadly pods that trapped Messalla, casting him in a golden beam of light and melting his flesh away like candle wax.  The sky fills with silver parachutes raining fire on terrified children.  On Prim.

My screams don't travel far.  They bounce off the bare walls and assault my ears.  As my shrieks fade the voice seems to morph until it sounds nothing like my own.  Deeper.  Pained.  Mad.  For a moment I think it's Peeta.  But even he's gone now.

I find comfort in the memory of his arms, twisting and ripping the thin paper robe on the bare mattress as my body molds to where his chest would be.  We shared this bed the nights before the Quarter Quell.  Touching and kissing.  All selfish thoughts that I don't deserve to remember.

I crawl off the bed and drag myself across the rough carpet, tearing the tender skin grafts for what must be the hundredth time.  I encase myself in the empty closet and pull the doors shut behind me.

It's darker without the city lights through the window and I have to feel my way along the wall to stretch out and lay on my stomach.  The carpet fibers against my cheek turn soggy as the tears slip free from my eyelashes.

Why am I not dead?  I should be dead.

I roll onto my side and surprise even myself when I begin to sing.  My throat is sore and my vocal chords protest after weeks of neglect, but soon my broken whispers build and my voice rings clearly with every word.

I sing the song about the meadow.  The one I'd sing to Prim as she fell asleep, and to Rue as she was dying.  When I run out of words to that song, I sing The Hanging Tree, followed by every ballad I can remember.  An hour must have passed when I reach the Valley Song, I've barely made it through the first verse when I hear another voice.

"Katniss?"

I startle and search frantically through the darkness.

"Katniss is that you?" I can barely make out the words through the thin wall.  But I recognize that voice.  Warm and familiar.  I'd recognize it anywhere.

I place my palm flat against the surface.  I'd forgotten that while the door to my bedroom was across the hall from Peeta's, the rooms shared a wall through the walk in closet.

"Peeta?" I say, keeping my voice hushed even though I haven't seen so much as a guard in weeks.

"I heard your voice but I thought -- I didn't think it was real," he says.  

And maybe this isn't real.  I am crazy after all.  It wouldn't surprise me if I were hearing voices now too.  I'm so desperate for him though, I don't care if this is only a dream.

"I thought you were dead," he says.

"I will be soon," I want to tell him, but I can't find the words.  "Why are you locked up?" I say instead.  "You didn't do anything."

I can hear him shifting and I imagine him adjusting his prosthetic leg to lean against the wall.  I do the same, drawing my knees to my chest and hugging them tightly.

"They think I'm an accomplice," he says.  "Apparently they didn't take too kindly to me throwing a guard over the balcony."

The image of Peeta hijacked and deranged flashes behind my eyelids.  "I'm sorry," I say.

"Was that your plan all along?" he says, referring to my assassination of Panem's newest president.  "When you agreed to the Games?"

"Yes.  It was the only way Coin would still trust me."

"You should have told me," he says, and in his typical Peeta way, he doesn't sound angry, yet I immediately feel overwhelmed by guilt.

I never considered consulting Peeta about my plan.  It was something I had to do on my own to tie up the last of my loose ends.  Haymitch understood this while Peeta never could.  I placate him anyway, because we promised there'd be no more secrets between us.  "I know," I say.

"Do you know what they plan on doing with us?" I ask when it becomes clear he has nothing left to say.

"Don't know," he says.  "It's taking them an awfully long time to decide."  His low chuckle makes the wall vibrate against my back, and I cling to this contact, as pitiful as it may seem.  "You wouldn't happen to have any nightlock left, would you?"

"You've never been one for gallows humor."  That cynicism was always up my and Haymitch's alley.  It was only Peeta's optimism that ever kept us in check.

"You know they won't kill us," he says sadly.  "They'll never be done using us."

I stare down at my bony hands, which are nearly impossible to see in this light.  I don't need to though, I can already picture them.  My nails are overgrown and ragged and my skin has paled to yellow.  They've kept me alive against my best efforts for reasons that have yet to be made clear.

"You should have killed me in the Arena," he says.  My eyes begin to burn again and I shut them tightly as tears leak from the edges.  "In the first one -- you should have let me die."

"I'm so sorry," I whisper.  I've always been selfish when it comes to him.  He never wanted to be rescued, but I could only think of myself.  I've used him as much as the Capitol and the rebellion have used me.  I can't help it though.  The more people I lose, the more desperate I am to hold onto him. 

"You should have let me eat that nightlock pill," I say.

"I guess we're both guilty."

I slide down the wall and lay on my side, my forehead still pressed against the cool surface.  "Will you stay with me?  Please?  I can't lose anyone else."

"You know I will Katniss.  Always."

His sincerity overwhelms me.  Even after all we've been through.  After all I've put him through.  He would be so much better off without me.  "You should hate me," I say through my misery.  "You needed me and I gave up on you."

"We're both still here, aren't we?"

We are, but barely.  We're ghosts of the two children whose names were pulled from the Reaping bowl, mended and rebuilt by the Capitol medicine insistent on keeping us alive.  I trace my fingers along the rough ridge of where my skin is grafted together like a quilt.  The same as Peeta's.

"Did you follow me into the City Center when I ran into the bombs?"

It takes him a moment to respond.  "Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't know," he says.  "I just knew that I had to protect you.  It was strange.  There was this voice in my head telling me to let you burn that you deserved to die, but I didn't believe it.  Not for a second."

I feel my lips quiver into something close to a smile, but I refuse to delude myself into thinking that he's getting better.  Nothing will ever be better.

"I'm tired," I say.

"Sleep, Katniss," he says gently.  "I'll take first watch."

We're not in the cave anymore, or lost in the jungle, or hidden in the sewers beneath the Capitol.  We've beaten the Games -- twice, and won the war too.  There's nothing left to survive.  I can't do it anymore.

Still, in the morning I carry myself to where a fresh tray is waiting for me and brings it back to the wall.

"The stew is terrible," I say as I force spoonfuls into my mouth.

"The buttered bread helps," Peeta says from the other side.  "It needs salt is all."

I take his advice and it's easier to clean the bowl.  "How many pills do you get?"

"Seven.  You?"

"Only three," I say popping them into my mouth and chasing them with a glass of water.

"I finally beat you at something," he says dryly.  "Lucky me."

We sit in silence, but it's a comfort to know he's on the other side of the thin wall.  That even if these are my final hours, I will be able to spend them beside him.

"Katniss?" he says, when the quiet has stretched into the late morning.  "Will you sing again?"

I sing him every song I can remember, and when I run out, make up the words on my own.

The door to my cell opens and I'm startled when I see Haymitch standing in the doorway to my closet.  "Come on sweetheart, tell the boy we're going home."


End file.
